20 MARS 2022

After having worn my sample of 20 Mars 2022 several times, I am rewriting most of my review. I am wearing this now, and I get unlit olibanum directly at the top, with cypriol, cedar, sandalwood, cinnamon, and pepper as the major accord. Next, I get vanilla, strawberry, and a little parsley. Any florality is completely trounced by the olibanum and wood, making florals a distant supporting note to smooth out any roughness. It’s complex and modern. It’s very strong, pressing your nose close immediately after application is not recommended. In this stage it’s herbal and medicinal smelling- but that isn’t the way it settles nor the way it carries. It’s amazing to me that cinnamon isn’t further up on votes. The drydown on this is like cinnamon on a cedar plank baking in the sun with some castoreum peeking from behind. 20 MARS is incense, wood, and spice. I’m totally sold on it as a winter frag, but here I am wearing it on a rainy spring day because I was in the mood for something spicy. The performance on this is SUPER STELLAR. I had a stale dabbing on a sweater, and after wearing it transferred to the ends of my hair that rubbed against it. It’s on my sweater now, which means I’ll be wearing it the rest of the day until I take my sweater off and then the sweater will be wearing it until I wash it again. It sticks on my nose after just sniffing the unopened sample, that’s how strong it is! The stylistic impression 20 Mars creates is difficult to pin down. Because of the unlit incense and dried herb notes, I’m vaguely reminded of a fortune tellers dark reading room or an occult shop. Just like the color of the juice, the composition is dark in tonality. It feels mysterious, and maybe that’s another interpretation of the name: the future is mysterious. It’s interesting considering this perfume is modern, and one of the oldest aromatic resins is the star note. Maybe a better name for it is ‘Fortold’. I can’t wait to invest in a full bottle of this! I love it so much, that while I should be thinking about buying my summer perfume i’m talking myself out of just buying a bottle of this. Update: I got a full bottle, and my boyfriend liked it so much he stole it from me.

My dudes: this is about our grandfathers. My next milestone is 60, and this reminds me of MY grandfather, at my age. My grandfather shepherded his family across war-torn Europe in 1945, keeping just ahead of the rapine and depravity of the advancing Red Army. They spent time as DP's in a camp for Displaced Persons, who organized their own church services and social life in the camps and had what sounds like a fine time as DP's. I imagine my grandfather as a young father getting into luxurious post-war pipe tobacco, making camp life fabulous in comparison to the War Year civilian life. From there they emigrated to Argentina, which in the Peron years had a very permissive immigration policy. They learned how to eat meat at that time. Europeans in the 20s-40's weren't exactly big beef eaters, but soak some entrena in chimmi churri and get back to me. By now my grandfather was smelling like an early 1950's Buenos Aires caballero,wearing the smells of the time. Then the Catholic Church fathers extended formal invitation and sponsorship for my grandfather to come to the United States around 1959, so he spent his 40's being a respected patriarch in a very ethnic South Side of Chicago, in the vicinity of Jake and Elwood's and Elijah's Marquette Park. He would have worn this. He smelled like this anyway, about the age when I wore the onesie pajamas and he had this plaid flannel ensemble from Sears. Everybody smoked cigarettes in those days, even out in the open at home. You had to have something that penetrated the olfactory din. Also there was more b.o. and less shame. So there is a tremendous air of masculine nostalgia, not outdoor middle-earth piney nostalgia like Slumberhouse Norne but more fireside gingerbread holiday not vampire goth (although not out of place with the Bela Lugosi Massive) very gentle and homey, wear some tweed with this FFS something in a Prince of Wales dress ya up for a change.

Here is a gothic gyre of aromas that bends my perception as I wear it. I smell Papier d'Arménie, smoldering in a dark room, then I am wandering the aisles of an occult shop in Salem. Now I am at fireside, a hearth festooned with boughs of cedar and fir, relishing a smattering of pinecone jam on bread. Further in, I am opening tins of tisanes with mulled spices while olibanum tears sizzle and the body heat of someone attractive entrances me. I decide on spruce-tips tea and inhale. I smell my spiritual side coming back to me when wearing this. It's the smell of not needing to know all the answers—to accept the darkness of the unknown. It is expansive on my skin, radiating like a luminous arc around my body. In other words, this is some trippy stuff. Do you know that smell that seems to come from steam, as from a bathtub or a sauna? That strangely cloudy sweetness—it is here. There is a bit of a smoke machine, too. I nuzzle into my arm and smell old pelts in abandoned closets of the long deceased—there's that, too. It's absolutely riveting.

This is a dream scent for me. Reminiscent of old, plant-herbalist apothecaries. The kind that sell licorice and spices as well. Bitter tinctures in the back, shelves and cabinets of old, dark, oiled and fragrant wood. Tea brewing, sweet scent of old fashioned candy. Warmth from a distant fireplace, dusty radiators and central heating. The musk lifts the pepper and cinnamon, giving the labdanum and vanilla a fuzzy texture. The incense lays dormant near a little altar devoted to an earthly deity. The evening before they lit a stick, but now only the whisper of smoke remains and the scent of fresh sticks. This scent is unique. It's perfect for those looking for something dramatic and dark without sadness or despair. It borders on being somber, but instead has the weight of age and history without losing depth of personality.

A Lethal Incense Masterpiece 🔥 If you are looking for a fragrance that enters the room like a true ninja—silent but deadly—Mars 2022 by Rundholz is the ultimate weapon. The incense here is an absolute powerhouse. It's incredibly distinct, wet, and vivid. It balances perfectly on a heart of rose and jasmine, cloaked in a subtle, sweet embrace of strawberry and sugary notes. The projection and longevity are insane; it holds its ground for hours. I highly recommend saving this for the cold winter months, as unleashing its power in the summer could be fatal to those around you. Designed exclusively for incense hardcores who strictly wear black. The code of the ninja approves.